The present invention relates to the processing of poultry for human consumption and more particularly to the inspection of poultry by a USDA inspector while the eviscerated poultry is on the processing or shackle line. USDA inspection regulations requiring the checking of each individual bird for disease state that the inspector must have a clear unobstructed view of: (1) the air sac area; (2) sex organ area; and (3) the kidney area.
In the prior art and presently, USDA inspectors have physically oriented the birds and spread the body cavity for visual inspection with their hands. More particularly, in the prior art, the birds being presented for inspection are hung head downwardly by their hocks from shackles with the breast side of the bird facing the inspector at the inspection station. The inspector normally places both hands beneath the breast of each bird to support it while inserting his two thumbs into the body cavity in order to stretch the cavity to a wide open condition so that he can clearly see into the cavity and thus inspect for the presence of any disease or foreign matter. The inspector will also manually tilt each bird to a convenient attitude for visual inspection.
In this manual inspection of poultry where the inspector touches each oncoming bird in turn, not only exteriorly but within the body cavity with his thumbs, there is a great likelihood of directly passing contamination from one bird to the next, and possibly to several birds on down the line as they come before the inspector.
Furthermore, the manual inspection process is tedious, time-consuming and quite tiring to the inspector who must repeatedly grasp and expand the body cavity of each oncoming bird. These drawbacks of the prior art have motivated and given rise to the present invention which has for its main objective to completely eliminate the touching of the conveyed poultry at the inspection station by the hands of the USDA inspector. Instead, in accordance with the invention method and apparatus, each bird in succession is delivered to the inspection station suspended head downwardly on a shackle with the back of the bird, rather than the breast side, facing the inspector. At the inspection station, in a completely automatic sequence requiring no touching of the bird, each bird is engaged and tilted to a roughly horizontal visual inspection position with the eviscerated body cavity facing the inspector for convenient viewing. While in this position, the body cavity is engaged and stretched widely open so that the inspector will have a clear view of the above-enumerated required inspection areas.
Following visual inspection, the bird engaging, tilting and cavity expanding means is automatically separated from contact with the bird and moved into a cleaning zone for thorough cleansing prior to moving into engagement with another oncoming bird at the inspection station. Each visually inspected bird then moves on with its suspension shackle for further conventional processing elsewhere along the shackle line. The inspection process therefore, in essence, is completely automatic both in terms of bird orientation and expanding or opening of the body cavity to allow clear visual inspection without the inspector touching the bird at any time.
Other features and advantages of the invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art during the course of the following detailed description.